The White Tulip Youth Hostel

The White Tulip is crammed right in the heart of the Red Light District in Amsterdam. It is only a three-minute walk from the train station and is very easy to find. The approach down the street leading to the T-Junction on Warmoesstraat is classic Red Light -- an excellent coffee shop on the right-hand corner, a giant sex boutique straight ahead, and a lot of people partying in the street. Immediately upon heading down this street, one realizes what is in store, staying in this part of town, and the experience will completely depend upon one's attitude and good fortune. The sign for the hostel is small and high off the ground, so keep your eyes peeled -- it appears sooner than expected.

Our reservations were solidly in place, and the staff seemed to have been waiting for us to arrive, so the welcome was extremely pleasant and professionally handled. Be aware that even in May, without reservations, bunks are not available.

The White Tulip provides guests with an ID card to gain entry to the rooms upstairs. This is a good security precaution, but one might expect the staff to remember a face after a few times through the door -- this never seems to happen. Of course, this is Amsterdam -- no one has any short-term memory here. Even we often forgot which one of our seventeen possible pockets the ID cards were stashed in, so getting in the door usually took a while. The "lobby" is no more than a stuffy broom closet filled with tourism brochures.

The stairs are steep, small, and sometimes difficult, but the rooms are quite spacious and have good natural lighting, a tribute to the fact that the windows do not close all the way. However, this is where the niceties end. Non-closing windows are great if you are a frequent coffee shop visitor, but the trade-off is that it gets very cold at night, and is ridiculously noisy -- there are dozens of people right outside partying into the wee hours. If you are one of them, it's no problem, but if you are in need of sleep, you'll have to wait for your next stop. Not all rooms have a table -- those that do have shoddy card tables. The lockers are mostly broken. Guests must stash their stuff under the bunks on the floor.

The bunks are horribly uncomfortable, to the point of being unusable -- simply a loose screen of mesh wire desperately trying to support an old, saggy mattress. These bunks are essentially hammocks, nothing more. If you have a bad back, or want to retain your good one, this is where it ends for you. Go somewhere else, period. These bunks are pure torture.

In addition, the sheets are never changed, and it is doubtful that they are washed between occupancies. You can use your own sheets here, as we chose to. A poisonous spider bit the eyelid of one member of our party during the night, and it ruined the rest of her trip due to extreme nausea, a blistering wound, facial paralysis, greying hair, and significant scarring. Given all that, she felt lucky to be alive a full month later when the bite finally healed. We also heard stories of people receiving numerous flea bites in this hostel.

The bathroom is co-ed, quite small, and the floor is always wet. Some of the rooms in the White Tulip can only be accessed by walking through the bathroom (yes, with luggage!) and out the back door by the last toilet stall. Who wants to walk directly though a co-ed bathroom every time they leave or return to the room? Obviously, shoes are a must at all times for those unfortunate enough to bunk in the back rooms. However, the showers do work decently enough, and the toilet stalls have solid, full ceiling-height doors to make up for all the foot traffic.

The Irish pub downstairs is never quite full of people, and seems to be more of a novelty selling point than anything else. It isn't very fun, as no one hangs out there, and the hostel offers no discounts on drinks. It is more worthwhile to leave the premises and go see the rest of the city where there are some fantastic places to hang out.

Overall, The White Tulip may serve as a great place to store one's travel belongings due to its immediate proximity to the Red Light District. However we recommend that guests stay elsewhere in the city, and walk to the Red Light if they wish to hang out there. It is not at all advised that guests spend any more time in this hostel than necessary, including sleep time. Try to catch up later in your trip and just focus on surviving until that check-out date. Think of this hostel as an expensive storage facility.

-- Avis exclusif de Hostelz.com